Picking Up Strays
by NinjaSquirls
Summary: Alphons Heidrich has never been able to resist the urge to take in every stray he finds, and in his mind, Edward is just another stray in need of a home. Oneshot. Yaoi if you squint [AlphonsEd to me, but if you don't like that, then Al is just a nice guy]


**A/N**: I seem lately to have developed a side obsession with one-sided AlphonsEd. What can I say? I love Hei-kun, and I firmly believe he loves Ed. This is kind of random, though; just a little exploration into Alphons' motives for adopting a troublesome, seriously screwed up stranger with a metal arm. Cause when you think about it, it's kind of an odd thing to do. So I started thinking about it one day, and then I started wondering if he shared Al's fondness for picking up strays, and thus was this born. Hope you like it!

**Disclaimer**: I own Alphons' alliterative brothers and multiple miscellaneous kittens; Alphons and Ed, though, continue to elude me. Blast.

* * *

**Picking Up Strays**

Alphons Heidrich remembered when he was five years old and walking home by himself from the imposing grey stone school building through the crowded streets of Munich. The easiest, quickest way to get home was through the alley that cut between Georgenstrasse and Nordenstrasse, and he always took it, even though his mother had threatened him with a thrashing if she found out he went that way.

As he hurried through the alley, he always saw the alley cats watch him from behind the old boxes and battered dustbins that littered the path, fur dusty and patchy and eyes glowing in the dim light. On days when the rain fell, turning the city grey and gloomy and sodden, the cats followed him as he ran, all the way out of the alley and into the street. Sometimes there would be a kitten, a tiny, pitiful wisp of fur that moved his five-year-old heart, and he would kneel quickly, while it wailed pathetically over the injustice of rain and the city and life in general, and scoop it into his arms and take it home with him.

His mother never let him keep the kittens he brought home. She was never unkind about it, never angry with him for bringing strays home. She would take them into the kitchen and pour out a bowl of milk and set it on the floor and let the kitten drink, and then she would explain to him, yet again, that an apartment with six people in it didn't have room for a pet, and a mother with five children couldn't afford to feed another mouth, even a small one. He always argued, sobbing and shouting and calling her cruel and heartless, but when the rain stopped, the kitten was always back in the alley.

* * *

Alphons remembered when he was ten years old, and running home from school and cutting through the alley to avoid his older brother Ansel and his friends, a daily gamble in which a failure to run fast enough resulted in a vicious beating to jeering calls of "sissy" and "girl." As he ran, the piteous mewing of a kitten cut through the panic clouding his thoughts, and he stopped so abruptly he skidded into a dustbin. Brushing off the knees of his pants, he glimpsed the source of the cry, a tiny grey kitten huddling in a cardboard box. He only remembered the reason he had been running when he heard a gleeful shout, and knew Ansel had found him.

Afterward, once he could breathe again, once he'd wiped away the blood and tested his arm to see if he could move it, he crawled across the filthy ground of the alley to the cardboard box, and to his surprise, the kitten was still there. He didn't think about the consequences; he didn't think about what his mother had threatened to do to him if he brought home another stray; he didn't think about what Ansel _would_ do to him if he saw him with a kitten.

He carried the animal home under his coat, cradled in the arm that didn't throb when he moved it. For a week, he kept it hidden in the basement of the apartment building, sneaking it scraps of his meals wrapped in a handkerchief. He knew it was ridiculous, that he could never hope to keep the kitten hidden, but he couldn't help himself.

He was the youngest of five boys, and the smallest, and the weakest, and it was strange to find something so much smaller and weaker than he was. To this kitten, he wasn't Alphons who was skinny and slow, who couldn't keep up, who always wanted to study instead of playing sports, who looked oddly at other boys, who needed to be beaten to punish him and make him a man. To this kitten he was big, and strong, and brave, and it made him want to protect it, to keep anyone from hurting it, ever. Because it couldn't protect itself, but he could.

It was Ansel, of course, who caught him sneaking off after dinner, found him with the kitten, and told their mother about it, so that she forced him to take it back to the alley and let it go.

* * *

Alphons remembered when he was fifteen years old and walking back to his apartment at the university from the post office, clutching an envelope in his hand so tightly that the paper was twisted and grimy and starting to tear. It didn't really matter, though, because he'd already read it. It was an official letter, distantly, bureaucratically kind; it read like a stock letter with the blanks for names filled in, which was probably what it was. It said Ansel and Alder, his oldest brother, had died a week ago, when the British shot down their plane.

He didn't have any family left. His mother had died a year ago, when Munich was bombed. Within a month, he left for university; his brothers left to join the army. Alric was shot by an American soldier a month after they joined. He was the youngest, except for Alphons. Ansem was the middle, undistinguished in every way; his platoon got lost in the northern forest, and he died of cold and starvation before they were found.

Which left only Ansel and Alder, but now they were dead, and he was completely alone. His feet led him automatically down the street and into the alley that was the easiest way to his apartment as he contemplated the letter he held, which would be the last letter he ever received from his brothers, even though it wasn't really from them; no more "Dear Alphons, we hope you are well at university and not studying too hard, we are well and the war will be won any day now, just you see, we have a new mission next week and leave after that," because they were dead, and he had no one left.

A soft mewling broke through his bitter reverie, and he looked up in shock to see that he was in the alley, and that he had nearly trodden on a tiny black kitten sitting on the ground directly before him. He hesitated, wanting to pick it up but remembering how badly his brothers teased him and hit him when he showed up with stray kittens. And then he realized that they couldn't tease him if he brought a kitten home now, and he would've started crying if they wouldn't have called him a girl, and then he remembered that they couldn't do that either, and he really did start crying.

In the end, he took the kitten home, because there was no one to tell him not to. He was grateful for it, those weeks after his brothers died; he could have laid in his bed, in his room, in the dark, and slowly died, and it wouldn't have mattered, because he didn't matter, because he was alone. But the kitten, who he thought dimly he should have named after his brothers but who he actually named Ava, didn't care about his grief; she needed to eat, and drink, and go outside, and so he found himself up and walking when he thought it was impossible to move, and as time passed he found the sharp edges of his grief blunting enough that he could stand to live with it.

* * *

Alphons remembered when he was eighteen years old and walking around a lecture hall at a rocketry conference, and a blond-haired boy he had never seen called his name from across the room, and he turned, not so much from the sound of his name but the desperate tone of the boy's voice. He stood still as the boy approached him, and he saw the look of despair that slid across his face when Alphons asked him who he was.

That was the first time he spoke to Edward Elric. It was a conversation that lasted several hours; the speaker proved to be both dull and uninformative, so with a nervous backwards glance from Alphons and a wide smirk from Ed, they snuck away to find somewhere to sit and talk. They talked about rocketry, and theories they both had. They found out they had been at the same university, and talked about professors they both knew. They talked about Ed's brother, whose name was Alphonse and who looked just like him, and Alphons didn't miss the way Ed's eyes glittered when he talked about him, the way his fists clenched in his lap, the anger and grief that choked his words.

By the time they finished talking, night was falling, and he said regretfully that he had to go back to his apartment, and he asked where Ed was staying. Ed said casually that he didn't quite know, but he was sure he could find a room somewhere, and if he couldn't, well, he'd slept on the ground before, and he could do it again.

Alphons looked at Ed standing there, hunched in his heavy ankle-length brown coat, and was reminded inexplicably of the stray kittens that followed him out of the alley when it rained. Edward wasn't cute (although Alphons had to admit he was pretty), and he wasn't sweet (although Alphons was fascinated by the intensity he saw in him), and he wasn't innocent (although Alphons was intrigued by the darkness in his eyes).

But Alphons could see it in him still – that same mix of fear and hunger that led the kittens to bolt, time and again, when he reached out to touch them, but also brought them back when he started to walk away. Ed looked like that; like he was terrified of Alphons, of what he saw when he looked at him, of the ways he could get hurt by getting close to him. Like he wanted to run away. But he also looked small, and lonely, and lost, as if he didn't have anything or anyone or any place to go, and would have reached out to the first person to offer him love, or affection, or just human contact.

Alphons saw that look, and he wanted to take Ed home with him. He wanted to show Ed that he could trust people again, that not everyone would hurt him, that there was more than pain in the world. He wanted to banish the anger and darkness in his eyes. He wanted to be strong for Ed, and protect him, and keep anyone from hurting him as he'd been hurt in the past.

As he offered to let Ed come back to his apartment, just for a night or two, until he found a place to stay, as Ed grudgingly accepted, there was a voice in his head shrieking that this was insane, that he was letting a complete stranger into his house, that this boy could be a criminal or a psychopath or worse, that this was the stupidest, most irrational, most dangerous thing he had ever done.

But Alphons had never been able to resist the urge to take home every stray he found. And in the end, what was Ed, but just another stray?

* * *

**A/N**: Please review? Please? Every review saves the life of a small, adorable imaginary kitten. 


End file.
